ArcGIS Viewer for Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 Beta now available!

We are very excited to announce the initial release of the ArcGIS Viewer for Microsoft Silverlight. To get the bits, just go to our new Beta Community Web site, sign up, and download the setup. The newest member of the ArcGIS family allows you to quickly create rich web mapping applications using a fully interactive configuration experience. With the product, you can set up and modify an application’s basemap, operational layers, tools, colors, title, logo, layout, links, and more without writing any code or editing any configuration files. Moreover, the Viewer is fully extensible, so designers and developers can implement new tools and create new layouts and easily integrate them into the Viewer. The Viewer includes the following:

Configurable Viewer – This is a ready-to-deploy configurable rich internet application (RIA) built on the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight 2.2 Beta. As a Web client, it works with your own ArcGIS Server services and data content from ArcGIS Online. The Viewer’s configuration is stored in configuration files and provides extensibility endpoints to plug in tools, behaviors, and layouts.

Application Builder – The Application Builder allows the quick and easy creation of Viewers through an interactive, WYSIWYG user interface. You can configure map content, tools (including GP services), and the overall look and feel of the viewer. As you configure your Viewer, the interactive Viewer preview will update in real-time, eliminating any guessing as to what your changes might look like. Once you are satisfied with your Viewer, click deploy or save to push it to a new website or update an existing one.

Visual Studio Template (for developers) – Along with the Viewer, we have made a Visual Studio template available for download from the Beta Community site, allowing developers to easily create new add-ins for the Viewer. An “add-in” is a modular chunk of code that can be shared and include tools, behaviors, and layouts. Within an add-in, you may leverage any Silverlight library, including the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight and the libraries offered by the Silverlight Platform. The template includes a fully functional, debuggable Viewer, a project to implement tools and behaviors, and another project to design layouts.

Once registered for the beta program, view the product overview video and download the software via the Software Download link under the Project Resources section in the sidebar. Use the Online Help link under the Other Product Resources section to peruse the help. Be sure to review the My To-Do list to complete surveys and provide feedback on problems you encounter or recommendations you want to provide. Use the forums to ask questions and work with the beta community to resolve issues. The screenshot below highlights a couple of these key areas of interest on the beta program home page:

We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new Beta Community site.

Is there going to a template visual studio application for Silverlight that includes standard tools like the WebADF at any point. Basic tools like identify, print and measure. I cannot find all of these tools in one place and I had hoped that the ArcGIS Viewer would do all of these things.

The section above called “Visual Studio Template (for developers)” mentions that “we have made a Visual Studio template available for download from the Beta Community site”.

Is this a separate download in the ArcGIS Viewer for Microsoft Silverlight Beta v1.0 section? Or is the template included in the ArcGISSilverlightViewer1.0_Beta1.exe?

I can only see the ESRI Standard Map Application and ESRI Showcase Map Application Templates when starting a new .NET 4 framework Silverlight Project after installing ArcGISSilverlightViewer1.0_Beta1.exe

Or is the template refered to here not a Map Application Project for the Viewer that we can customise?

While we do provide an application template (will work in Visual Studio and Expression Blend), it will not provide the same experience as the Web ADF. While they may share the same IDE, their architecture is significantly different. Modifying functionality packaged with the Viewer involves changing config files. To manipulate tools in toolbars present in the Viewer, you’ll need to make changes to the Tools.xml file (under the Config directory in a Viewer application).

On the home page for the ArcGIS Viewer for Microsoft Silverlight beta site, look under the “Other Resources” section on the left sidebar. There you will see a “Visual Studio Template” you can download and register with VS2010.

Have installed the application builder on a 2003 server
, 4.06 Silverlight and I get a nullreferenceexception when running til Appliciation Builder. Is there anything that should be setup after installation?

First of all thanks for the deligence and creation of a product that will provide a means to rapidly deploy essential tools to our field survey teams. This is going to place ESRI in the lead of competitors.

The downside; I understand canned or pre-defined query building tools may have been overlooked. I most say that canned queries or tools to quickly filter and highlight features/attributes are a necessity for Analysts and Assessors in the field. Please include this feature set in your final.